DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 12:59 AM |
twoolley |
Hi all, I just got a great deal on a Cendyne DVR-105 atapi internal from Staples ($160 after rebates) for my upgraded PowerTower Pro. This is a Pioneer DVD-R. Apple System Profiler in OS X recognizes it as burnable with rev.1.0 firmware. I know rev. 1.21 is available from Pioneer as an .exe file, but so far no Mac firmware update can be had, and I don't have access to a PC to make the firmware upgrade. It reads commercial DVDs, CDs, and reads my CDR collection fine with OS 9.x using hacked DVD Player v.2.7. So far I haven't had a chance to test burning either CDs or DVDs in either OS 9 or OS 10.2.3. I'll report on that later. The audio stutters playing DVDs in OS 10.2.3 with DVD Player v.3.2 however, but as far as I can tell no video frames are dropped. It reads and plays CDs and CDRs fine in OS X. I am wondering if I should connect the analog audio cable to the motherboard to perhaps improve audio stuttering, if that even applies to DVDs at all, or whether adding to my 704MB of memory might improve performance in OS X? Any other users on old world Macs that have advice or imput on successfully using DVDs with OS X will be appreciated here. Tom Sonnet G4 800 CPU in PowerTowerPro 250. Sonnet Tempo Trio in PCI slot A1, Western Digital SE 120GB Single on bus O, DVR-105 on bus 1,Master on Trio. Radeon Mac 7000 in PCI slot B1. Ethernet card in C1. 704MB memory not interlaced. Two drives, one Yamaha 8/4/24 CD burner on internal SCSI bus. |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 09, 2003 8:27 PM |
twoolley |
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Burn Report #1 Well, the internal DVR-105 burns and plays back audio and data CDs perfectly at 16x - twice as fast as my old internal Yamaha 8424. I used Toast 5.2 inside OS 10.2.3. Tomorrow I'll try to burn a DVD. |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 08, 2003 4:28 PM |
chibi_delenn |
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twoolley, Sorry to hear your audio cable attempts didn't help any. As for me, I have a Radeon PCI 32 MB DDR (R7200), not the crappier 7000. As for 10.2.4, it does speed up things noticeably, but not enough to be of any benefit in DVD Player. There is no new DVD Player version either in 10.2.4. I know this because I've installed 10.2.4 (6i20) on my mac to try it out. Everything seems a bit snappier, but not enough to use DVD Player quite yet. I reverted back to 10.2.3 very easily thanks to the disk copy image I had made of the OS X partition earlier. Yay diskcopy 6.5b11 having a clone feature. :) Unfortunately, I cannot say anymore whether or not 10.1.5's DVD Player (3.1.1) will help, because 10.1 refuses to see any of my Tempo Trio's HDs. I can thank firmware 3.5.0 for that. Boohiss. Looks like we're stuck with AssTacular OS X DVD for the foreseeable future. - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 08, 2003 10:18 AM |
twoolley |
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chibi delenn, You were right - the audio cable I connected to the DVR-105 last night made no difference. I'm sorry your experience with the G4 800/Radeon 7000? combo was poor. My experience is quiet the opposite in my PowerTower Pro. I wonder what the difference could be? And DVD Player (with hack from OS9 Forever) works well most of the time when I boot into 9.1. marcush, Yes, I bought the 4-128 OWC FPM RAM sticks after reading the same info in Mac Gurus. My system is extremely stable, so I guess you are right about my other old RAM. Well, I too experienced problems (mostly audio breakup) in the menus of LOTR. I booted into OS 9.1 and it was much better, but not perfect. Let me know how your experiment with ATI 10.2 drivers and the older AppleOnBoardAudio.kext goes this weekend. I am waiting for Apple's 10.2.4 update and Ryan's XPostFacto 3.0 update before trying anything dangerous to upset the stability of my OS X installation. BTW, have you tried any of the Region Free hacks - and do they work? In the end, I do not think I have lost anything here, since most of my upgrades to the venerable PowerTower Pro can be used later in a newer machine with a a faster bus speed when I feel the timing/price is right. Unfortunately I have not been too impressed with the Mac Tower bulbous form factor for the last couple of years - I'd rather have one of their beautiful new Powerbooks! I can always slip the DVR-105 in an external firewire case when the time comes. Tom |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 07, 2003 4:05 PM |
chibi_delenn |
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marcush, I am back to using my G3/400 (G3/333@400 on an XLR8 CarrierZIF MPe card) instead of the juicy G4/800 I had hoped for. While it worked, the G4/800 breathed staggeringly fast speed into this old mac. Unfortunately, it, and its successor (another G4/800) hated the Radeon PCI I have. If I had any money left to try again with the G4/800, I would, just not with OWC, since they have horrible refund/return policies. I will reinstall 10.1.5 today (in a few minutes, actually) and see if the 3.1.1 DVD Player will play back DVDs properly. If so, then great. If not, then the Tempo Trio would appear to be Doomedâ„¢ when it comes to useable ATAPI in OS X. I would just use OS 9's DVD Player, but sadly it ignores Colorsync, and is too dark to be watchable. If I find a solution, I'll post it, that's for sure. - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 07, 2003 2:31 PM |
marcush |
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twoolley, You are correct. I have 1Gig of interleaved RAM (8x128). It is OWC FPM RAM. Two of the 8 sticks are true 2k refresh 60ns RAM. The other six are the more recent 4k (2k per bank) RAM that OWC is selling that many have reported problems with. I've been lucky I suppose. I tried EDO a few years ago before I bought the first two 128's but it made the machine unstable. Mac Gurus also recommended against EDO RAM in the Catalyst and Tsunami logic boards. Your existing RAM in the second bank must also be 2k refresh 60ns. Otherwise, I would expect your system to be unstable with different types of RAM. It certainly won't hurt to add more. I think 768MB RAM was a breakthrough point. After I went up from 512MB I realized a perceptable increase in performance. I didn't really notice a difference going from 768 to 1GB. I've noticed no difference whether I play a DVD from the Firewire drive or the internal drive through the analog cable. I think mikeandy53 has hit on the solution by reinstalling the ATI drivers from 10.2. I'll try this and reverting to the 10.1.5 version of the AppleOnBoardAudio.kext this weekend to see which works best. Analog input is the next thing I want to get working. This has never worked for me in X. I have a Mac Soundblaster that I've been holding on to but the open source project to get these cards working appears to be at an impasse due to a lack of human resources. I wanted to get one of the new M-Audio Revolution 7.1 cards but I'm going to wait until 10.2.4 comes out. According to Think Secret.com Apple has been working on drivers for the Creative Audigy and Extigy sound cards. I have the 2-Disc LOTR set and the 4-Disc extended addition. Both stutter in the menus. Some others I have do the same thing but the actual movie plays back more or less very well. I hope 10.2.4 takes care of all of these problems. Speaking of DVD's and such this is the exact name of the patch I mentioned before: DVDPlayer 3.2 no DVD Cocoa.app Chibi, Yeah I think that the Trio is probably pushing the PCI bus really hard. I would not be at all surprised if that is the source of the lackluster copy performance you see. What processor do you have now? I 've read your posts over at xlr8yourmac about the trouble you had with the Sonnet G4 800 and your Mac Edition Radeon, but don't remember what you ended up going with. |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 8:10 PM |
mikeandy53 |
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I have a Sonnet G4 800 and a Radeon Mac Edition in a 7600 with 1 gig of ram. The DVD drive connected to a firewire card. I had a similar experience with DVD playback. It worked fine in 10.1.5 and 10.2, but sound stutters in 10.2.3. I solved the problem by reverting back to the ATI extensions that were part of the 10.2 installation. Once I did that, sound played smoothly once again. BTW I also experienced the problem when I installed the ATI October update. Mike |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 6:36 PM |
chibi_delenn |
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marcush, Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, your hardware, while it is similar (Promise based, like mine), it is not a multifunction card like the Tempo Trio is. Most people I know have no problems with the plain ATA series Sonnet cards. It's the Trio that seems to get the most problem reports. Real world use, for apps and games (mostly) I get decent performance. It's the throughput during copying that is most annoying. Just moving from one drive to another, even with a large single file, drops the performance by nearly 10 MB/sec over the same HD when used on my old Sonnet Tempo ATA/66 card. Not exactly what I call an improvement. As for the analog audio cable being helpful in OS X DVD Player, I doubt it at all. I use an analog audio out cable (since I kinda need to for CD in OS 9), and I get no speed boosts (or penalties) over not using it. I'm going to try installing 10.1.5 temporarily and seeing if the 3.11 DVD Player allows full speed. If it does, then there's hope yet for the Sonnet cards...if not, then there's a serious design flaw in the Trio series that needs to be addressed. Regarding the VideoLAN player, the reason you get full speed sound, is that that particular player DOES allow for full 5.1 digital out, etc, but unlike the apple player, it doesn't take any advantage of ATI hardware present in the computer, so that is why the video is so crappy. If ATI would send documentation to the makers of VideoLAN, then I'm sure we'd have a winner for DVD finally. :) - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 5:52 PM |
twoolley |
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Marcush - I was hoping you might reply as I have read some of your threads regarding DVD in the past. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you have 1 GB memory, which means it must be interleaved by default (8 x 128mb). Is that EDO or non-EDO FPM? Perhaps I need to add four more 128mb chips (mine are FPM) to the 2nd bank which now contains old 32's and 64s. So you do use an internal audio cable to the Pioneer but don't use it to play DVDs. Instead you use the external Toshiba, so digital video and audio are being sent over firewire to a PCI card inside your PTP. The audio I assume is then being sent as output to an external sound system from the PTP as I also do. Apparently your audio is okay but on some disks (LOTR) video is degraded. My video is usually okay but it is the audio that often hiccups. Strange. Further, I have read that the new Macs require 3rd party internal superdrives to be configured as cable select, rather than master. Even so, some newer Mac owners are reverting to an AppleOnBoardAudio.kext from OS 10.1.5 to avoid audio stutter with 10.2.3.. I am not brave enough to try the hack required for that. Do you have successful analog audio input (microphone or line) to your PTP with 10.2.3. I don't. I guess you do get digital audio input from the Toshiba firewire. Or do you have a separate audio PCI card (m-Audio 2496???) I have the Lord of Rings 4 DVD set. I will try the endless menus tonight to see if I get video problems. I figure I will definitely get audio stutter. Some DVDs will play audio & video better than others on my PTP system also. Tom |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 5:26 PM |
marcush |
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I forgot to include my specs. here they are; Power Tower Pro, Sonnet G4/800, 1GB RAM, Sonnet Tempo ATA/100, MacSense 10/100 ethernet, Ratoc Firewire/USB2.0 combo, ATI Radeon Mac Edition 32MB (in bottom PCI slot). |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 5:09 PM |
marcush |
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Interesting. I have a very similar configuration to yours but DVD playback works well for me with an internal Pioneer DVR-104 attached to a Sonnet ATA/100, and an external Toshiba SD-R1202 DVD/CD-RW drive in a firewire case. I save the Pioneer burner for iDVD usage almost exclusively and use the Toshiba burner for my DVD playback and CD burning. The Pioneer drive is the set to master and is the only drive on the 2nd channel of the card. The 1st channel has a WD 80GB SE (Master) and an IBM 120GB 120GXP (slave)attached. I still have two SCSI backup drives in the machine but they are unattached and unpowered. 10.1.5 and 10.2 gave me excellent DVD playback. Starting with 10.2.1 I started to see some degraded performance. I now notice ocassional dropped frames. The menu of the Lord of the Rings DVD now stutters badly, though the movie itself plays back well. I'd say overall performance is still very good. I do have an audio cable connecting the internal Pioneer drive to the logic board though. The reason the Firewire drive works is because I patched the DVD Player app with the "cocoa no dvd drive 3.2" patch available from macbidouille.com |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 8:51 AM |
twoolley |
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chibi_delenn - Thank you for the reply. Yes, the WD SE 120GB w/8MB cache is my only IDE drive on the Tempo Trio other than the DVR-150. But as I indicated below my name, I do have two older internal SCSI drives. I boot OS 10.2.3 off an <8 gig partition on the WD 120GB with no problems. Using Carbon Copy Cloner I copied the OS X partition to one of the SCSI drives, and it too boots without incidence. I am pleased that I can watch DVD movies with OS 9.1 without the audio stutter using the same exact hardware, and I suspect that a future software update (OS 10.2.4 or perhaps Quicktime) might fix the stutter in OS X. In the Apple Discussion Forums I have read that others with more modern hardware also have problems with DVD audio stutter since the 10.2.3 update, even on OS 9.x!!!! Mine works on OS 9.1 without having to turn off user interface sound effects. My understanding is that so far OS X does not do digital audio with DVDs, so I thought perhaps connecting the DVR-105 analog audio output to the motherboard might help. As yet I haven't found a cable to do this. My audio cable on the Yamaha CDR to motherboard uses different connectors. Interestingly, VideoLan DVD Player does apparently do digital audio, so I tried it. I get the opposite effect from Apple DVD Player v.3.2 > perfect sound, poor video in OS X. How do you measure DVD scan speed and what software do you use to measure your HD performance? Frankly, in real world use before installing the DVR-150, I have been extremely happy with the speed of my WD 120GB IDE on the Tempo Trio. It is so much faster than my old SCSI internal drives. And I am so thankful to Ryan for XPostFacto. I installed OX 10.2 five months ago with nary a problem, and have never had a kernel panic. After installing 10.2.3. I switched to the Sonnet 1.2.6 OS update to activate the L2 & L3 caches which makes OS X boot faster than L2CacheConfig/PL L3 CacheControl combo. I do hope that someone (Ryan?) will figure out how to activate audio input for OS X on my faithful PowerTower Pro. Thanks all for any further help. Tom |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 3:14 AM |
chibi_delenn |
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Oh, and regarding my DVD stutter - the audio is mostly fine, with a bit of breakup fairly often, but the video is like, 4 FPS. Unacceptable. |
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DVR-105 with Sonnet G4 800/Radeon 7000/Tempo Trio |
February, 06, 2003 3:11 AM |
chibi_delenn |
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I'm guessing that your only HD is the WD SE HD w/ the 8 MB cache, correct? If so, I'm glad to see that you don't have problems booting OS X with it (or do you?). If you're having problems with DVD on the Tempo Trio, you're not alone. I too, have a Tempo Trio (firmware 3.5.0, required for my WD 200 GB SE HD), and a Pioneer DVD-106S 16x DVD-ROM drive, and DVD is fine in OS 9, but it doesn't even make it to the Craptacularâ„¢ mark in OS X. It's so stutterific that it's unwatchable. Audio and video do not sync at all. My old ATA/66 card (Tempo ATA/66) could do DVD at 8x scan speed just fine in OS X. The Tempo Trio can't do even 2x, which is just plain crappy. HD performance is 10 MB/sec *LESS* on the Tempo Trio in both OSes compared to the ATA/66 card I used to use. I know being "true" IDE, which requires the CPU itself to take control of the card's functions is a slowdown of sorts, and I also know that it being a multifunction card, and having to share bandwidth between three high bandwidth buses is also somewhat of a bottleneck, but jeebus, <1.6 MB/ sec for DVD read?? Pathetic. The only reason I keep this Tempo Trio card right now is that it has allowed me to empty a PCI slot for later insertion of an M-Audio Delta DiO 2496, and I get zero audio stutter, and mostly watchable DIVX playback in OS X. It's DVD that doesn't work in OS X. I'd use OS 9's DVD Player, but um, er, it SUCKS. It's too goddamned dark to watch, whereas OS X's player is Ultra Brightâ„¢ :) I've been working on, and will continue working on, solutions (ANYTHING!) to work around the Tempo Trio's limitations. Even in True IDE mode, it shouldn't be *this* slow unless there's a design flaw Sonnet refuses to acknowledge. Time will tell... - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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